Motivation

The purpose of this course is to become familiar with the techniques, biological parts, accomplishments, problems, and challenges of synthetic biology. For the most part, we will focus on E. coli and yeast. Participants will be expected to individually contribute to OWW pages describing the history, development, and implementation details of engineered parts and organisms from the scientific literature. Then, they will be expected to create a proposal as part of a group with specific experimental and modeling details for using synthetic biology to solve an outstanding problem with technological or societal impact.

Assignments

Coursework will consist of in-class oral presentations on scientific papers or research proposals and a "written" component consisting of Wiki page edits on OpenWetWare. All participants in the course will be expected to provide feedback concerning the content of presentations and the content of Wiki pages.